Breakfast that will take you all week!

When I originally wrote about The Farmington Cookbook (the historic Farmington house in Louisville, Kentucky; original date, 1968; mine is fifth printing, 1979), I didn't say much about the rather prominent sticker on the cover that designates this as the Official Kentucky Derby Hostess & Entertainment Guide. I wanted the Derby menu to come as a surprise. This week, the hostesses will be showing you how to do Derby Day breakfast right.

Yes, I know the Derby isn't until next weekend, but if you want to do it right, well, you better start now. This breakfast is an undertaking. 

Yep! It's for 24 guests. I frankly can't imagine being ready for 24 guests under any circumstances, much less at any reasonable hour for breakfast. And this thing has more dishes than my family's typical Thanksgiving dinner.

It starts out with (I guess?) breakfast appetizers. 

The Cheese Wafers are the typical cheese snacks people used to make when they didn't think Cheez-Its would be sufficiently fancy for the guests, but these are extra special in that they're topped with pecan halves or crystallized ginger.

Of course, no "fancy" menu used to be complete without tomato bouillon (chilled, in this case, since May is supposed to be a warmer month). 

I've never figured out why people used to find V-8 or tomato juice plus canned bouillon so alluring, but it's pretty ubiquitous in these old books.

I'm sure most of you are more interested in the Mint Juleps, and you may be delighted to know that this recipe is for Mint Juleps en Masse. After all, you'll need enough for a couple dozen people.

It's very reassuring to know that "most people will like these." Just hope the rest won't consider them crimes against mint juleps? I know nothing about making mixed drinks in general or mint juleps in particular, but the equivocating headnote makes me think that the writer kind of expects people to object somehow.

For this breakfast, one meat course isn't enough, so we'll need two. To cover those with a preference for poultry, there's Chicken Hash.

It's good to note that this "may be cooled, refrigerated and reheated slowly" later, as otherwise, cooks would need to start in the middle of the night to have this done by breakfast time. As if it's not hard enough to deal with a couple dozen people first thing in the morning, trying to do it on an hour's sleep would be even worse...

For those who wouldn't think it's a proper breakfast without some form of pork, there's the Country Ham. 

Yeah, I'm serious about how you have to plan ahead. The ham needs to be soaked and drained and soaked and drained, and that's even before we get to the glazing, baking, trimming, scoring, crusting, cooling, refrigerating, and trimming into thin slices for serving. I'm starting to realize that this menu for one meal is more work than I put into a whole week's worth of food.

But there is no time to reflect because we've still got to make some Corn Meal Battercakes.

Apparently, these aren't expected to be too popular, as the recipe makes only 16-18. They're in competition with the Hot Buttered Beaten Biscuits (no recipe given), so that could explain the small-for-this-menu recipe size.

I'm not usually a veggies for breakfast person, but this menu calls for three. In addition to the suggestions of Fresh Asparagus with Browned Butter and Bibb Lettuce and Watercress Salad (no recipes provided), hosts are also supposed to supply Stuffed Mushrooms Parmesan.

And no breakfast is complete without a dessert course, so in addition to the Strawberries with Powdered Sugar and Thick Cream, we have Muffin Cakes...

I guess the name is an admission that muffins with this much sugar are really cupcakes, especially if nobody even bothers to throw in some fruit to make them seem healthier?

Then finish it all off with Chocolate Truffles and Salted Pecans.

Honestly, the thought of trying to eat even half this stuff first thing in the morning makes me feel kind of queasy. Come to think of it, horseracing kind of makes me feel queasy too. (I want to warn the horses what will happen if they get injured.) And the thought of looking up more information about Farmington definitely makes me queasy... Very large house from early-1800s Kentucky that people are intent on preserving? Pretty sure slavery was involved there. (Yes, it definitely was.) So I think I'm going to give up on this breakfast before it makes me lose my lunch.

Maybe don't get your salad and pizza from a bank

 A Matter of Taste (The Heart Savings and Loan Association, 1979) certainly tries to look classy.

I mean, the cover has a crock of paté, wine, fresh berries, and perfectly picturesque desserts. As I read, though, I unsurprisingly found myself drawn to the homier recipes. I decided to represent this book with a classic pairing: salad and pizza.

Of course, you know I have to go with surprising twists on the old classics, though, so...

...maybe your gourmet spinach salad-- you know, the kind with crispy bacon and marinated artichoke hearts!-- will also have cantaloupe chunks along for the ride because everyone knows "gourmet" is code for "ruined with a garbage fruit"? 

Alternatively, for an international mashup meal, we could start with a Mandarin-Chicken Salad.

You know, the kind that starts out with equal parts mayonnaise and marshmallow creme... and that gets served on cantaloupe rings, for some reason. Maybe this cookbook was also sponsored by the National Garbage Fruit Association?

One final option, since no list of salads is complete without a gelatin-based entry:

Beet Gelatin Salad! Now featuring julienne beets, crushed pineapple, celery, beet juice, and sweet pickle brine! I'm kind of surprised that the dressing for this one doesn't feature mayo and marshmallow creme combo, but you can always mix and match if you're so inclined.

Now, on to the pizza. If you want an actual pizza-like pizza with a very '70s sensibility, there's Stroganoff Pizza.

You'll end up with not one, but TWO crusts slathered in canned mushrooms, ground beef, chili sauce or catsup, and sour cream!

For the less pizza-like option, there's Pepperoni Rice.

There's no crust, no tang of tomato, and no stringy cheese on top, but I'll admit that saffron rice flavored with pepperoni and fresh mushrooms sautéed in butter, then topped with a heavy dose of cheese does not sound half bad. It's probably the best bet in the lineup, and, as the end note suggests, it's "A meal in itself. Add salad for a light dinner." Maybe just don't go for my recommendations....

Freshen up an old recipe with surprise (budget) ingredients...

Aside from the budget angle and the shaky grasp of the concept of "meatless," another aspect of Loyta Wooding's Smart Shopper's Cookbook I liked was the surprise twists on classics. When I saw Texas-Style Chili in the cookbook, my immediate thought was that I'd use a different chili style for a budget cookbook. Texas chili has no beans, and beans are way cheaper than meat, so beany versions just seem more practical. Then I looked at the ingredients and saw that this version lists pinto beans, so a bunch of angry imaginary Texans started protesting in my mind. But then I saw the directions.

The pinto beans are served on the side to make the chili stretch without actually turning it into a non-Texas chili. Would actual Texans approve of the workaround? I'm not sure, but I like the ingenuity.

I was only slightly surprised to see a variation of a "Meat-zza"-- a version of pizza made with ground beef as the "crust." I've certainly seen it before, but it's often marketed to dieters as being low-carb. The carbs are cheap, so why ditch them here? This isn't a diet book-- It's a budget book. Well...

The carbs are still here. They're just spaghetti. And the spaghetti is a side this time. (Also of interest: This version gives the ground meat "crust" an Italian sausage topping. The meat crusts are rarely topped with more meat, so this is double twist!)

I've also seen my share of mock drumsticks: ground beef shaped on a skewer to resemble a chicken leg. I was a little shocked to discover that this budget version uses an edible "bone" instead of the skewer.

The hot dogs might cost a bit more than skewers, but they are also 100% more edible, so I guess that's an instance of making sure your food dollars actually go toward food!

Not sure whether all these variations of old standbys will outrage Texans, tempt dieters who wish desperately for spaghetti, or make anyone wish they could swap out real bones for hot dogs, but I'm glad to know that somebody dreamed these things up.

Partying like it's 1999 (by which I mean sans fat)

All right, everybody! Get ready for the most recent cookbook I've ever featured, thanks to the random lot of community cookbooks I ordered a month ago. Today's specimen is Christ the Rock Lutheran Church 10 Year Anniversary Family Recipes (copyright 1999, though the cover says the anniversary is in 2000). 

The cookbook reminded me of just how popular the low fat/ fat free craze was in the '90s, as I can (and did) plan an entire nearly-fat-free menu just from this book.

Don't think we'll skip the appetizer! Have some Bean Dip-Low Fat.

I love that the recipe recommends eating the dip with WOW chips (which are not a thing anymore, for good reason, though apparently Olean is still quietly used in some diet foods today). You can't get much more '90s than deciding the possibility of anal leakage is preferable to eating fat.

Midwesterners will need some ranch dressing for the side salad to go with dinner (Christ the Rock is in Rockford, Illinois), so here's some Ranch Dressing for Everything Fat Free.

There are plenty of fat free main dishes to go with the dip and salad. If you want to live dangerously and have even more beans with the Olestra chips à la bean dip, make some Fat Free Enchiladas.

If you're in the mood for Italian, there's Fat/ Cholesterol Free Lasagna.

Granted, Morningstar Farms burgers have changed in the past 20-some years, but I think Gwen Weiland is seriously underestimating how much fat is in the vegetarian burger patties. Meat free ≠ Fat free

Or, if you want 1960s-style comfort food for the 1990s, there's Fat Free Stroganoff - Easy!

I love that this one uses veggie burgers (again) with roast beef gravy (plus just enough fat free sour cream that you hopefully won't notice how terrible fat free sour cream is). 

And don't worry that you'll miss dessert! Of course we have one. 

There's even an option to make a "regular" version (meaning not fat/ cholesterol free). Again, though, I have sincere doubts about how fat free the fat free version is. Even though this says "When you use applesauce and egg whites and the premade frosting, there is zero cholesterol," that doesn't mean there's no fat. I suspect the icing has to be abandoned entirely to get close to fat free. 

As I read through the book, I initially marveled a little at how popular "fat free" used to be (even though I cooked that way in the 1990s when I took over the cooking duties since mom was so bad at it). I wanted to be a dietitian long ago (Glad I didn't go that route!), and I wanted to do things right. 

However, as I looked more closely, I realized that fat free probably wasn't all that popular even then. My entire menu is from the same contributor: Gwen Weiland! In short, I would have been the Gwen Weiland of this cookbook. (And I might have mistaken my own prolific recipe offerings as proof that low fat was indeed popular.)

I can't be too hard on Gwen, though, as other people's ideas of being healthy didn't always sound much more appetizing. Maybe Whole Meal Pizza was Dee Block's way of trying to get the kids to eat more veggies...

...but I wouldn't want the tradeoff in soggy crust that dumping entire cans of mushrooms, green beans, and spinach on a whole pizza is likely to cause. The extra cheese on top might temporarily hide the problem, but would this be any better than the fat free stuff? I'm not so convinced. I'm just glad I'm not trying to eat '90s-style health food.

Healthy carrots for the bunny!

I know the Easter Bunny is planning to visit a lot of houses this weekend, so how about a carrot-centric menu? And everybody will be stuffed with sugar from all the candy, so it only makes sense to create a healthy (well, '70s health-foody) menu from The Natural Foods Cookbook (Beatrice Trum Hunter, copyright 1961, but mine is from a 1975 printing) to counterbalance it. What could be better (well, other than a menu that tastes good, is unlikely to trigger sensory-specific satiety, and uses way less gelatin and soy)?

We need to start out with an appetizer, so the Carrot-Pineapple Appetizer should get your appetite started without filling you up. 

Just be sure to blend it really well. Otherwise, it could be a bit chunky, and I'm not sure many people want big carrot chunks in their pineapple juice.

Easter is often still a bit chilly, so a hot soup might be a good prelude to the meal.

And yes, the Quick Carrot Soup also fulfills the milk powder requirement imposed by '70s health food menus, along with whole wheat and soy flours and more nutritional yeast (in case there wasn't enough in the appetizer). 

We know no special-occasion '70s menu is complete without a gelatin-based salad, so Carrot Molded Salad is up next.

This one uses plain gelatin with cider and sunflower seeds in place of the more usual lemon-flavored Jell-O and crushed pineapple. 

Now, we need a ring for this to be a proper vintage menu, and we need some soybeans to make it a proper '70s healthy recipe. That means Carrot-Soybean Ring is the perfect main course!

Who wouldn't want the holiday centerpiece to be a ring of carrot custard filled with edamame? (Well, other than just about any reasonable human being... It was a rhetorical question.)

And now, dessert. A carrot cake is so overdone, right? Well, how about Carrot Chiffon Pie?

You'll notice it has some of the usual carrot cake spices. It will just be cold, very lightly sweet (only two tablespoons of honey!), and loaded with raw eggs so everyone can wonder whether they should worry about salmonella. Oh, and no pesky cream cheese icing that makes carrot cake so good. Sugar and saturated fat, you know. This carrot pie is the perfect cap for a menu that even the Easter Bunny would probably question. A plain carrot is better any day...

Whiz Gee! Mixing up some menus with peaches and onions

Now that I've worked my way through the 1970s offerings from my community cookbook shipment, let's move into the '80s! Today's featured book is Gracious Goodness! A Peach of a Cookbook (The Junior League of Macon, Georgia, first printing October 1981, though mine is from the October 1985 third printing). 

I wonder if people in the 1980s immediately thought of butts when they saw the cover. 

In any case, the book's defining feature is an entire peach-colored chapter of peach recipes. There are a lot of desserts that sound yummy if you're into cooked peaches, like Fresh Peach Sour Cream Pie and Old Fashioned Peach Shortcake. Of course, you know I'm not going to show you the crowd pleasers. Nope. From me, you get things like Peach Pickle Salad.

Which honestly, probably sounds fine if you're into pickled peaches (though I'm not!). In any case, pickled peaches in lemon Jell-O with white cherries and pecans is going to have a more limited audience than Fried Peach Pies. (Especially with the added packets of plain gelatin to make sure this salad is congealed as firmly as possible.)

And unlike me, the sweets-and-meats crowd might be at least a little tempted by Spiced Chicken with Peaches.

The "spiced" crowd is unlikely to think the description is justified by the nutmeg, basil, and black pepper seasoning, though.

I like the solidly '70s vibe from Peach Frost Salad.

I'm not sure there's a huge call for peaches and pecans frozen into a glob of cream cheese/ whipping cream/ mayo now, though. (Or even in the '70s, if I'm being honest. Does anyone really want a mayo-based popsicle?)

At least the Peach Daiquiri looks pretty good.

I mostly just included it to contrast with the very sad Jim Hall's Strawberry Daiquiri found in the non-peach-centric white-paged portion of the book.

Why a can of diet Shasta strawberry instead of real strawberries? I do not understand. I guess the rum was supposed to be enough to keep people from noticing the distinct lack of strawberries.

If peaches aren't your thing, there's also a little section on Vidalia onions, as this book loves to try to move that Georgia produce. There's a Vidalia Onion Casserole for those who want a gratin-style side dish.

(Not even any canned soup, believe it or not!)

I was kind of sad that the Vidalia Onion Pie isn't a dessert. It's really just a variation of a quiche Lorraine.

You know I would have been sending this for the Pieathalon if it were a Vidalia chiffon with peaches, pecans, and celery!

The recipes in this one are pretty fun to look through, but I saved up the best ones for June! If you think about that for a few minutes, I'll bet you can figure out what kinds of recipes will be popping up for one of my favorite annual features....

The Book of Whole Meals Springs Away

Happy Spring! Now that we're officially into the season, it's time for one last peek into Annemarie Colbin's The Book of Whole Meals (1983, but feels like it's from the '70s). Her spring menu is, as per usual, full of dishes that start out as plain, flavorless entrees that get magically transformed into plain, flavorless lunches through the magic of small additions! Take dinner. It's a big bowl of bulgur (or "bulghur")...

Flavored oh, so lavishly, with... salt.

The bulgur gets topped with sukiyaki.

If by "sukiyaki" you mean "some vegetables boiled in water with a little shoyu."

And if this all seems a bit spartan, don't worry! There's soup, too. 

Yes! More boiled vegetables. At least this time, they've got miso.

I know dinner might sound a bit deficient on the protein, but don't worry. It's in the dessert: a Tofu Cream Pie.

As much as I'd like to make fun of the concept, I have to again disclose that one of my favorite desserts is a chocolate tofu pie my mother-in-law makes. (It's mostly butter, chocolate, and sugar, though, with just enough silken tofu to make it soft and creamy enough to slice. Plus, the tofu lets everyone pretend dessert is healthy and not just a mound of butter, chocolate, and sugar.)

Will this Tofu Cream Pie be great? I doubt that tofu plus tahini and maple syrup or barley malt will come anything close to my favorite chocolate tofu pie, but this is probably the most exciting item on the dinner menu.

In the morning, any leftover tofu can be repurposed as a breakfast scramble.

With the health food store favorite, alfalfa sprouts! And one of the only seasonings Annemarie Colbin is aware of: shoyu! (And again, I personally enjoy a good tofu scramble now and then, but there are waaay better ways to season one.)

Wondering how lunch will turn last night's leftovers into a brand new meal? Here's a hint:

What is it? A severely burned taco? A dark chocolate cake thoughtfully presented with a splash of cat barf? Nope. The dome shape and the (I guess?) lettuce edging hints at one of our favorite types of recipes. That's right! It's an aspic!

The leftover sukiyaki gets suspended in agar flavored with a bit more shoyu, plus some ginger or horseradish. This might be slightly more flavorful than dinner! But it will also be cold, gelatinous, and topped with radishes, so there's a definite trade-off. 

And we wouldn't want that leftover bulg(h)ur to feel left out, so it gets mixed with some flour and fried into Bulghur Croquettes.

Flavored with... more salt! Yes, lunch is such a lavish spread that no one will ever realize it's just dinner mixed with agar on one side of the plate and flour on the other. What do you bet that everybody's spooning out the minimal amount of lunch they can take while still being considered polite and hoping that there's still some leftover pie? It doesn't sound like it's perfect... or even necessarily that good... but at least it's not that vegetable aspic.

I'm wholly glad I did not have to try to choke down whole meals from this book, but I loved checking it out.

Make-Your-Own, Louisville Style

Here's the second in my ongoing series of books from the mystery shipment! The Farmington Cookbook (the historic Farmington house in Louisville, Kentucky; original date, 1968; mine is fifth printing, 1979) is fun because of its emphasis on home cooks making their own alterations to recipes to suit their own diners. 

The book actually includes a series of explicitly "Make-Your-Own" recipes, so we're going to examine them today.

Luckily, the "Make-Your-Owns" focused on just the types of recipes I love to peruse anyway, like casseroles.

In the make-your-own version, it's your fault if you end up with stinky tuna and hard-cooked eggs in a sea of Chinese noodles, mayonnaise, water chestnuts, sherry, and croutons. Nobody said you had to try combining those. (I'd probably go for Tofurky "ham," mushrooms, rice, cream of mushroom soup, almonds, chopped green pepper, and cheese.) Maybe it's just me, but I love going through the list and considering all the possibilities. 

You might notice that this first casserole formula doesn't insist too hard on including veggies. You could easily follow the instructions and skip veggies entirely, or give them only a very minor role. If veggies are lacking, supplement the main dish casserole with a Make-Your-Own Vegetable Casserole.

Once again, it's up to you whether you want canned peas in cream of asparagus soup with canned small onions, sliced olives, mustard, and cornflakes or fresh sweetcorn in cream of mushroom soup with buttery crackers, crumbled bacon, a bit of Tabasco, and a cozy blanket of cheese. (And yes, you're picking up on my fondness for cream of mushroom soup and CHEESE.)

No 1970s menu is complete without a molded salad, so of course, the book offers the make-your-own option.

I appreciate that this starts with plain gelatin to avoid the fight against sweeteners that might not really fit a salad. At least, I did until I saw the quarter cup of sugar, so... the formula is not as forward-thinking as I originally thought. This is also by far the most lenient of the make-your-own recipes, suggesting that you can add "1 1/2- 2 cups of whatever you wish to mold to each cup of liquid." I guess this is an implicit concession that people put pretty much anything in gelatin molds back then. Shrimp, grapefruit and cheese? Ham, eggs, pickled peaches, and olives? I guess the Louisville ladies figured readers couldn't think of a combination that was weirder than what was already out there...

My favorite title by far is the one for the make-your-own dessert recipe, though. 

I can't help but love anything called "Make-Your-Own Marshmallow Whatever." A Marshmallow Whatever is apparently marshmallows melted in a flavorful liquid, briefly chilled, then fluffed up, mixed with whipped cream, and topped with whatever strikes the cook's fancy. It seems like the kind of light and airy dessert that would have made its rounds in ladies' luncheons (especially if it was made with sherry).

Many of the regular recipes offer variations too, but the "Make-Your-Owns" are my favorites. The homey creativity is much more in line with my style than the 1000-course fancy breakfast for your two dozen closest friends featured in the Derby section! (And Derby Day is coming, so watch this space.)